“Yeah?”
“And I’m a Raven.”
“Your point?”
Stieg went down two steps until he stood right behind her. “And we were chosen by gods. Not to worship them, but to fight for them.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up until she was trapped against his chest.
“Stieg Engstrom, what the holy fuck are you doing?”
“We are Vikings.” He held his screaming woman tight and jumped into the black.
“Stieg! You mother . . .”
* * *
“—fucker!”
Báraldur heard the screamed curse and looked away from the sword he had in the fire. He sighed. “Dammit.” Leaving the weapon in the fire, he walked to his front door and yelled out, “Vikings!”
Báraldur’s wife came in from the stables and gazed down at the pair who’d burst uninvited into their home. “You picked this gods-forsaken place,” she complained, “and then you bitch when they come through the bloody door.”
“The rent was cheap, wasn’t it?”
“You’re cheap.”
“Just get them up.”
“You get them up!”
But the pair didn’t need any help, because they got up fighting. The man using his arms to block his face from her blows and the woman calling him every horrible thing in the book.
“You do that to me again and I’ll cut your legs off!”
“We had no choice!”
“Fuck you!” She was only a foot or so taller than his wife, but she was skinny. A wisp of a thing.
The man also stood, but he kept growing.
For a moment, Báraldur thought he might have been wrong. Maybe the man was from Jotunheim. They never came this far, the giants, but there was always a chance. Life was chance.
Thankfully, the growing stopped and he realized that what stood before him, arguing with the woman, was a man, not a giant.
“I should set you on fire!”
“I had no choice, Erin! You were just standing there!”
She roared and turned away from him but stopped quick when she saw Báraldur and his wife. “I’m . . . I’m sorry. We thought we were alone.”
“Yes,” the man said, “we—”
“No one’s talking to you!” the woman barked.
The man threw up his hands in frustration.
Báraldur saw his wife bow her head, hiding the smile on her lips.
“You’re from Midgard,” Báraldur noted. “Land of the humans.”
“Yes,” the man answered. “And we need to get to Corpse Shore.”
The woman faced the man again. “Why don’t you just fucking announce it to everybody?”
“Are you just going to keep yelling at me?” he yelled.
“Yes!”
Báraldur’s wife, unable to stand the fighting another second, went to the woman and took her hand. “Come, girl. Let us get you some food and water from our kitchen.”
“I’m not hungry.”
She gazed up at the red haired woman. “But you will come nonetheless or I’ll make sure we are seeing eye to eye for the rest of your life. Understand my meaning?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Then come.” Báraldur’s wife led the woman away.
Once they were gone, the man said to Báraldur, “The situation we were in . . . I had to do something.”
“I believe you, Viking. But I don’t think she gives a fat fuck.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Annalisa waited while the orderly unlocked the door to the room that held Jace’s false prophet ex-husband. They were going to send out a challenge tonight to the Carrion and wanted the false prophet to be secured someplace where they had immediate and unquestioned access to him.
She’d come after hours, paperwork for the transfer signed by officials that would keep most of the pain-in-the-ass doctors from questioning too much.
The orderly opened the door and Annalisa walked in.
“All right, Mr. Braddock . . .”
Instantly Annalisa noticed two things. Jace’s ex didn’t automatically complain that he was called Pastor Braddock, and the room was really dark.
Braddock didn’t like the dark. Probably because that’s when the Crows tortured him. When it was dark.
She turned toward the orderlies to ask if they knew where Braddock was, but they closed the steel, reinforced door in her face.
“That can’t be good.”
Two Carrion emerged from the shadows and walked toward the center of the room.
“Yeah.” Annalisa sighed. “Not good at all.”
* * *
Karen struggled to keep her phone to her ear with her shoulder while shoving papers into her bag. “I’m asking you guys,” she begged the fellow shifter on the other end of the phone, “to help. We can’t pretend this doesn’t affect us. It affects everyone.”
“Look, Karen, I don’t know what you want me to say. You were told a long time ago that if you wanted to associate with those people—”
“One guy! He’s my best friend.” She closed the bag, clipping it shut.
“It doesn’t matter. He’s not one of us and he’s not that human, so we don’t see this as our problem.”
Karen clenched her jaw in frustration, quickly realizing her fangs had come out.
This was why she had so little to do with her kind. They were humans who could shift into wild animals, but the Nordic Clans were the freaks? Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with the current Nine Clans.
“Is this about the wolves?” Karen asked her contact.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Really? Am I really being ridiculous?”
As long as the world had existed there had been shifters. Of every race, religion, and species. The ones considered the most volatile were the wolves that, it was said, had descended from the Nordic god Loki. For centuries, they were part of the Nine, just like the Ravens. But they were hard to control and had become known for killing and eating entire towns when the mood struck them. Eventually, they were kicked out of the Nine and the Crows took their place. Something the wolves had never forgiven the Crows or the Clans for.
Although Loki’s wolves had no say or sway among the Vikings, they still had pull among the shifters.
Rushing to the door, Karen grabbed the doorknob. “Look, I know the fucking canines can be difficult, but I really wish you could—” She opened the door, and they were just coming down the hall toward her. Leathery wings out. Big bodies moving.
Karen slammed the door shut, could hear them running now. Running toward her.
“Karen? Karen? What’s going on?” she heard from her phone before she dropped it and ran to the closet. She yanked that door open and grabbed Stieg’s stupid goat, which she’d taken in after a highly upsetting call from Vig, even though the thing hated her and hid in the closet almost the entire time she was home.
Hefting Hilda under her arm, she ran toward the balcony, hearing them bursting into the room behind her. Karen didn’t even stop to open the glass doors. She went through them, using her body to protect the screaming Hilda.
She leaped up on the railing and jumped, landing on the ground and rolling until she was on both feet. People around her were screaming, ducking to avoid the flying glass.
Karen ignored them all and ran. That idiot, screaming goat still in her arms.
* * *
Billy stood outside the door while the patients in the other room screamed and howled. The crazies always knew when something was off. He looked at Scott, his “partner in crime” as the nurses liked to call them. “Dude, we shouldn’t have done this.”
“Shut up.” Scott hit one of the doors with his fist and yelled out. “All of you shut up!”
But no one shut up. It just kept going.
“The nurses are going to come.”
“Who? Darryl? He’s sleeping in the break room downstairs and Delores is out for her dinner break. So shut up!”
“She’s a doctor!”
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“And they’ll think that nut Braddock did it and ran. We’ll be in the clear.”
Billy knew why Scott was doing this. For the ten grand they’d been offered. But Billy hadn’t found out until tonight that part of the deal was leaving the doctor in that room alone with those . . . freaks. So pale. Almost green. And like their skin was . . . flaking. Decaying, even.
It was weird!
The horrible noises coming from Braddock’s room ended and the other patients didn’t just calm down. They stopped. They stopped everything. It was like they were waiting.
Scott pointed at the door and Billy stepped back. “Fuck you. You do it!”
“Pussy,” Scott shot back. After waiting a few more seconds, he walked to the door and pressed his ear against it. “I don’t hear anything,” he whispered.
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
Billy inched closer but still didn’t put his head against the door.
Finally, frustrated, Scott pulled out his keys and unlocked the door.
It was hard to see in the poorly lit room, but Billy couldn’t miss the male head in the middle of the floor.
“I don’t see her,” Scott said, kicking the damaged lab coat she’d been wearing aside. Her stethoscope lay ripped apart and tossed on the bed.
“Let’s get out of here,” Billy said, turning toward the door.
A hand gripped his throat and Billy let out a panicked squeal. Scott jumped back, but before he could react, another male head hit him in the face, knocking him to the floor, his screams setting off the other patients.
The doctor stood in front of them. She was covered in something black and green; her hands were sticky with it. Billy could feel it on his neck. What really terrified him was the doctor herself. She wasn’t panicking. She wasn’t angry. She definitely wasn’t scared. She just gazed calmly at him with those cold eyes.
He saw eyes like that every day when he had to check on the patients that the docs had diagnosed as sociopaths. Men and women who would never get out of this place unless it was to go back to prison for the rest of their lives.
Scott struggled to his feet, and when he finally stood, he suddenly swung at the doc with the blade he always had hidden on him. In case the patients got a little out of hand.
But the doc, her eyes never moving off Billy, caught Scott’s wrist and twisted. The blade hit the floor, but before Scott could bend down to get it, she released Billy and flung out her free hand, hitting Scott in the throat.
Billy thought it was a lame attempt to punch Scott, but something splattered across Billy’s face, nearly blinding him. Scott dropped to the ground, eyes wide open, his skin torn, blood pumping out of his throat and dripping all over the floor.
She held up the hand she’d hit Scott with, right in Billy’s face so he could easily see it. He watched the talons—because that’s what she had—retract back into her fingers, disappearing beneath skin and normal human nails.
Shaking, Billy stared at the doc.
“Well, that could have gone worse,” she calmly told Billy. “Those dudes are hard to kill. Luckily, there were only two and I’m not prone to panic.” She stepped closer to him. “Now . . . tell me everything, Billy. And I won’t spend hours tearing you apart. But lie to me . . .”
She held up her forefinger . . . that talon back.
The doc didn’t finish her threat, but big black wings eased out of her back and Billy screamed.
He screamed and the other patients joined in.
* * *
Kera had barely stopped the SUV in front of the Ravens’ main house before Jace jumped out and ran up the stairs. Yanking out the keys, Kera followed her friend, catching up to her just as they made it to the kitchen where the Ravens had Karen, a blanket around her shaking body. She was still human, but her eyes were a weird yellow color and her fangs peeked out from beneath her gums.
The girl was terrified.
“Oh, my God, Karen!” Jace said, stopping in the middle of the kitchen and staring down at Stieg’s friend. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” The shifter’s voice was no more than a growl. “They came to my apartment, Jace. My fucking apartment!”
“I’m so sorry,” Jace said. “But I’m really glad you’re okay.”
“She saved Stieg’s goat.”
The two women gawked at poor Siggy, who had the goat in his lap and was rubbing its belly like a puppy.
Karen’s hands clenched into fists. “If you bring up that goddamn goat one more time . . .”
“I don’t know why you’re angry. Stieg would be really glad to know you were watching out for his best friend.”
“You keep talking, and I’m going to mark all over this house!”
“What happened?” Kera asked Josef, deciding not to get involved in this particular fight. She had enough to worry about.
“Like she said. A couple of Carrion came to Karen’s apartment tonight.”
“For Stieg?”
“We don’t think so.” Josef stood, motioned to his chair. Jace sat down and tried to comfort Karen, but the shifter wanted none of that. In fact, she hissed at poor Jace like a caged house cat being dragged to the vet.
Josef stood next to Kera, his back to Karen and the others. “You understand why they did this?”
“To kill our only connection to other shifters?”
“We know other shifters, but none that will help. Only Karen could have made that happen for us.”
“Okay. Um . . . do me a—Shit.” Kera pulled her cell phone from her back pocket and answered. After listening to the conversation at the other end, she disconnected the call and took Josef by his arm, pulling him out of the kitchen. “We have a problem.”
“I sensed that.”
“Annalisa went to the mental hospital to get Braddock so we could secure him at our house, but he’s gone, and the orderlies were paid to lock her in his room with two Carrion.”
Josef’s eye twitched a bit. Just like it did when he was about to get into a fight with Chloe. “Okay.”
“I guess what I’m not sure about,” Kera admitted, “is what all this activity means.”
“I’m sure nothing good.”
* * *
Leigh stood in the Bird House hallway glaring down at her phone. She swore, yet again, if she survived the upcoming apocalypse, she was so going to break up with her boyfriend. He was such a dick!
A knock at the front door stopped her from sending out a string of curses. Knowing it would set her boyfriend off and wanting to be all-in for that particular fight, she went to the door first, but didn’t open it. None of them did anymore. Not since Erin got shot in the head by one of Pastor Braddock’s minions.
Instead, Leigh stood on the opposite side of the door, hand on the doorknob, and slowly eased the door halfway open before she stopped, blinked, and closed the door again. Turning off her phone, she went down to Chloe’s office and knocked on the door.
“Come!”
Leigh leaned in. Chloe, Tessa, and Betty. Perfect. “You guys busy?”
“What’s up?” Chloe asked.
“I need you at the front door.”
“Are you okay?”
“Just . . .” She waved at them.
“It’s not more cult people coming to kill us, is it?”
“No.”
The three women glanced at each other, then followed Leigh back to the front of the house and, after a breath, opened the door.
The Carrion had nailed a naked male body to it, runes burned into his chest.
“Huh,” Betty said.
Tessa clasped her hands in front of her, both forefingers pressed to her chin. “Please tell me that’s not one of our, uh . . . guys.”
“Too small to be a Raven or a Protector.” Betty went up on her toes and tried to see something on his back. Not easy . . . again, the man was nailed to the door. “It’s one of the Silent.”
Chloe winced. “Are you sure?”
??
?He . . . the body, has Vidar’s rune branded on the shoulder.”
“Think it’s Brandt?” Tessa asked.
Chloe pulled her phone from the front pocket of her jeans and looked up a name in her CONTACTS. She put the phone to her ear and suddenly let out a breath. “Brandt! Hi. Uh . . . are you guys missing anybody? You are. Notto. I see. Uh . . . we think he’s been nailed to our front door. Well, we’re not positive because, um . . . no head. Yeah . . . yeah . . .”
Betty stepped past the doorway, paused, and leaned back in to casually announce, “Found the head.”
Tessa went outside, returning a moment later and mouthing to Chloe, Notto.
“Okay,” Chloe went on, clearly feeling horrible about all this, “we have a confirmation. It’s definitely Notto. Uh . . . yeah. Sure. You guys come over . . . whenever . . . to . . . collect him.” She cringed. “Okay. Bye.” She disconnected the call. “Well, that was terrible.”
“It’s like kicking a puppy,” Leigh complained, staring at Notto’s remains. “I mean, the Silent are basic fighters, but they’re not . . . us, ya know? They’re politicians. Not exactly a challenge.”
Leigh pointed at the runes branded on Notto’s chest. “What do these mean anyway?”
Betty crossed her arms under her breasts. “You know that challenge we were going to give to the Carrion tomorrow to help lure Gullveig out in about three days when Erin will be back with the sword if she doesn’t get killed within the Nine Worlds?”
“Yeah.”
“Well . . . that schedule’s been moved up to just before dawn”—she glanced at her watch—“in about eight hours.”
“But Erin thinks she has several more days.”
“Yeah.” Betty closed the door, Notto still attached to it. “But she doesn’t.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“You know, over the years, I could have killed him. Now I realize I should have killed him.”
Arnóra placed a plate filled with last night’s meats on the table in front of the stranger. “I’ve said that more than once myself and yet my husband lives. Even worse, the longer he lives, the more the children become attached.” She poured a mug of mead. “What’s your name, girl?”
“Erin.”
“I’m Arnóra.” Elbows on the hard wood, she leaned against the table and studied the human, Erin, as she picked at her food. She was calming down. Probably feeling a little bad about yelling at her man.